


Let me be the street

by randomalia (spilinski)



Series: There will be fireflies [3]
Category: Merlin (TV) RPF
Genre: M/M, Misunderstandings, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-28
Updated: 2015-06-28
Packaged: 2018-04-06 14:42:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4225797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spilinski/pseuds/randomalia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are some memories of France Bradley won't talk about.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Let me be the street

The first night in Cardiff, Bradley goes to Colin's door and knocks. It's still early in the evening, a deepening purple light hanging over the bay; outside it's beginning to get cold.

He waits for a while but there's no answer. He wonders if Colin is even in there.

*

Everything is different in Wales. It seems like another step along a strange path that started with Colin and then went on without him. Bradley goes to work, goes to dinner, goes to sleep; he thinks he's doing alright. He just isn't sure how he got here.

If it were a laughing matter at all, he'd find it amusing, falling for someone in France of all places. It would probably be funnier, he thinks, if he didn't see Colin every day. If he couldn't remember how Colin had looked when he said, _we're not doing this_ , when he said _no_.

*

Not long after they arrive, the BBC sends a reporter to ask inane questions about the show. Bradley finds her at the tea and coffee station; he picks out a bottle of water and fishes around for the milk.

"Do you have a favourite memory of France?" she asks him as he reaches for a cup.

"The castle," he says, knowing this answer already. "It was just such a brilliant set to work on. I climbed right to the top one early morning and I could see everything, the entire village."

He remembers how hard it had been to catch his breath. He remembers the glitter of pale sky on the faraway lake, how everything seemed simultaneously new and old, steadfast and fleeting.

*

By Friday they're running over schedule; it's past nine when Bradley unlocks his hotel room and looks back over his shoulder for someone who isn't there. He's always picked up habits easily, but Colin had to stay for some extra shots and Angel had gotten back hours earlier, so tonight it's just him.

He changes his shirt and walks to the nearest bar, and finds a girl with an interested smile. He spends half the night sucking her lower lip into his mouth, congratulating himself on breaking a pattern; her neck smells like roses, tatstes like chemicals, feels strong and warm beneath his fingertips. Sometimes he opens his eyes to watch her long hair spill over his wrists.

*

"How're you going with all this?" Tony asks him on Monday. His voice echoes faintly in the open-ended set.

"Good," Bradley answers. "Yeah, good."

*

The reporter is still hanging around. During the week Bradley spots her talking to Richard and then Katie.

"Have you had your interview yet?" he asks Colin. The crew are setting up for a shot in the field.

"Yeah," Colin says, watching the lights go up, the licorice layers of cord and tape. "She asked me about Welsh food."

"Oh," Bradley says. "So did you sing the praises of the local cuisine?"

"I said I hadn't had any. Too busy to get out."

Bradley snorts. "That will make for a fascinating interview. Oh, Colin, have you had any of the amazing local food? Colin Morgan: No."

That makes Colin smile, and Bradley wrestles with both triumph and frustration.

"Obviously I was her favourite interviewee, then," he goes on, holding to what he knows. "Since I gave her proper answers, and lied horribly to make myself more interesting. She clearly loved me best."

Colin looks away, a thin cresent of shadow falling under his cheekbones. "Yeah, I thought so. The way she was practically falling into your tea cup and all."

"I —" Bradley thinks back to the brief interview, abruptly wrong-footed. "I should have offered her some tea," he says.

Colin huffs with laughter, his mouth twists. "Don't think that's what she was interested in."

"Where were you?" Bradley asks, utterly confused.

"Nowhere," says Colin, closing his eyes obediently as someone comes to dab at his face with make-up. "Just passing."

*

A day off finds Bradley and Angel catching a movie together. Angel blinks and yawns all the way through; Bradley watches and tries to let her sleepiness sink in to him slowly.

"Didn't Colin want to come?" she asks him halfway through the credits.

"Yeah, no," Bradley says, "I didn't ask."

Angel sighs. "That boy needs to relax more," she says.

*

Arthur spends a lot of time watching Merlin, Bradley decides. It's because Merlin is a mystery to him, something he can't figure out; it means all his responses are involuntary. All his feelings.

Colin is not quite as much of a mystery, not to Bradley. With his own hands Bradley has calculated the organic curve of Colin's ribs, the slip of Colin's dark hair. He has discovered the way Colin tastes at hip and neck and knees, how to make him cry out and forget himself.

But those things are in the past. They are old skills in a new world: unnecessary, best forgotten.

*

The next time Bradley feels wired he goes running. The streets flow by in patterns of orange, white and black: some lit, some not. He turns down busy roads, curving lanes, breaks into a walk when he reaches the Plass, his ribs heaving. He turns down to the bay.

It's wonderfully dark. The city wavers on the surface of the water.

*

Eventually, Angel stops giving Bradley strange looks and insists they all go out for 'team-building drinks', just the four of them. They discuss Katie's hilarious love of caves ("It's clearly a repressed love," Bradley tells her. "Very repressed," Katie says.) and Colin gets tipsy from breathing the alcohol fumes in the air (or so Bradley surmises). Over by the bar stands a woman with dark skin and a pretty face; she quirks an eyebrow at Bradley when he looks. He looks a few times, during the night.

"You're not staying?" Colin asks lightly as they finish up, huddling their empty glasses together on the table.

"Why would I stay?" Bradley says.

Colin looks at him. Katie and Angel are tumbling out the front door, their voices drowned out momentarily by a passing car.

"That, you know, that girl," Colin says. "At the bar."

"Trying to set me up, are you, Morgan?"

"No," Colin says.

"Good." Bradley shrugs his jacket on viciously. "'Cause you've already made it clear, mate: you're not interested. So, there's an end to it."

They go outside, where it's been raining. The footpath is slick and grey. Bradley watches Colin button his coat with clumsy fingers, the wild wind tugging at his hair.

*

Back at the hotel, Bradley stands in his kitchen, blinking against the electric brightness. He doesn't want to go to bed. In his head is the sound of Colin saying _that girl, at the bar_ ; his mind is caught on the ruthless note in Colin's steady voice. _You're not staying?_

He goes back out and knocks on Colin's door. When it swings open, Colin's gaze flutters over Bradley's face, his shoulder, out into the night. There's a pink flush rising in his cheeks.

"Come in," he says.

*

There are some memories of France Bradley won't talk about, won't tell any reporter, like the morning he had found Colin in the chapel, reading through curling pages of script, tucked neatly away from the rest of the crew. The bright day was pouring through the stained glass windows, pink and gold and touchable, and Bradley had stared until he saw stars when he blinked. Then he'd stepped in close, snagged the edge of Colin's jacket with a sure and reckless hand.

He'd kissed the light as it fell on Colin's lips, there with white stone and silence all around them, nothing else for miles.

*

They stumble back toward the bed, clutching at shirts and shoulders and elbows; Bradley falling back under searching hands and muttered curses. Colin climbs over him, his eyes wild. He lifts Bradley's shirt out of the way and licks lush kisses all along Bradley's stomach, slipping one hand down into Bradley's trousers. Bradley closes his eyes against the perfect fit of Colin's hand.

They fuck slowly. Colin shudders against Bradley's bare thigh, unmaking him with the burning press of tongue, the sweet push of fingers. Bradley had lifted his hips but Colin shook his head, said, _haven't got anything_ , and so they simply move together, indolent, intent. Like the first time. Just like the first time, but better, Bradley thinks. It's never been so good.

Bradley reaches down and brings their cocks together, thick and hot in his hand. Colin presses his face against Bradley, presses their cheeks together and slides against him, rolling his hips and breathing soft sounds into the air.

*

Bradley tries to hold very still, afterward, to not say anything stupid. Words lap treacherously at the hull of his tongue: _Why did you/Do you still/Can't we just—_ He bites down on them. Lets his mind drift with his fingers touching the braille of Colin's spine.

When they pull apart, Colin has that wretched look again, the same one he wore when he pulled away from Bradley that last time. The one when he said _we shouldn't do this, we're not doing this anymore._

Bradley's stomach pitches. He can see what's coming but instead of anger, or fear, he finds an overwhelming sense of familiarity, of _Colin_. Colin, who likes Bradley enough to kiss him, to touch him again; to step back and apologise, looking like hell. Bradley almost laughs.

"God, I love you," he says.

The knuckles along Colin's hand flash white as the sheet.

*

Bradley can read easily the doubt on Colin's face, so starkly obvious alongside the lack of his own.

"I mean it," he says quickly. "I mean that." It doesn't matter if Colin still draws back from him again, because it's true. He knows what he wants. All the same, his heart is hammering.

Colin looks at him for a long moment. Then he jerks forward and kisses Bradley on the mouth.

*

"I didn't know," Colin murmurs. "I didn't know. I thought —"

"You're a prat," Bradley says, his voice shaking.

They kiss again, clumsily; kiss each others' lips and hands and faces. Bradley rubs his thumb along the rough edge of Colin's jaw, white sparks popping along his sinews. He can smell the heat coming off Colin's skin, the sweat.

He rolls them over, and tangles their legs together. He remembers being back on the turret at Pierrefonds: the light sinking into the lake, everything new and old at the same time.

"I wanted this," he mutters against Colin's throat. "Wanted — you don't know how pathetic I've been." He looks up, feeling something of his usual self returning. "I drew a sad face on my toast, Colin," he says seriously. "With strawberry jam."

Laughter trembles up out of Colin's body. "Bradley," he gasps, eyes creasing happily, "Bradley."

Bradley holds on tight, taking everything in, feeling it all the way down to his bones.

 

_I wish in the city of your heart_  
_you would let me be the street_  
_where you walk when you are most_  
_yourself. I imagine the houses:_  
_It has been raining, but the rain_  
_is done and the children kept home_  
_have begun opening their doors._

_— Robley Wilson_


End file.
